What does "optimization" mean to you?

[Keld Denar]

Maybe you should play a different game then? D&D just doesn't model that aspect as well as you'd like. Its an abstraction, and when you make an abstraction, you sometimes have to clip corners from reality. Its ok, there are lots of other games out there that handle this better. D&D just isn't one of them.

[Jolly]

Maybe you should play a different game then? D&D just doesn't model that aspect as well as you'd like. Its an abstraction, and when you make an abstraction, you sometimes have to clip corners from reality. Its ok, there are lots of other games out there that handle this better. D&D just isn't one of them.

It's not a terrible issue, more of an annoyance. I prefer people who try to play their character, rather than a system that forces you to. :)

[Ignition]

In that case, D&D's the perfect system for you

[Yukitsu]

I notice how it's almost always GMs that are getting the flak for being "bad at games" and other sundry accusations. It's never players that are bad at team sports or that have "Doesn't play well with others" written on their report card. It's always the GM getting accused of all kinds of things, never the player's fault for being overly competitive in a co-operative environment.

Mostly for the same reason newbie DMs are given some slack. Players at the table will vary in competence or experience, and maybe the DM's they have had don't reward team work (in fact, many times I've seen DMs penalize good teamwork by reducing EXP rewards because teamwork is a force multiplier.) An experienced DM however is a constant, you don't have a bunch of people with varying amounts of slack.

Come to think of it, generally the people who excel are given greater overall rewards in many games, as opposed to people who work as a team, so I think DMs have been harbouring some sort of anti-teamwork ultra capitolist mentality in players.

Here's a thing about being a GM: you cheat. You cheat outrageously. You fudge dice, change your mind about resources, hit point totals, numbers of opponents and amounts of charges in magic items all the time. You cheat in ways that in theory should be getting you thrown out of the game.

I don't know. I've never found this at all necessary, so long as I have a tentative understanding of what I've given the party, and what their mentality and builds are, I can challenge them within the rules. It feels lazy to me to just toss in more ad-hoc instead of stopping to think about what would be an interesting challenge. Some people noted that my players also levelled ultra fast, because I threw high CR challenges at them fairly regularly. My response was always "so what? It's not like I can't just keep tossing CR+4 at them, it's not as though I'm going to run out of numbers."

Etc. on rules

Eh, I don't really agree with any of that. A DM shouldn't need to simplify or play by different rules to present an adventure and provide story or plot hooks for the players. I think it's OK when certain places have a mechanical gimmick that is readily expressed to the players before hand, and I think all campaigns should have a set of house-rules (such as no drown healing) but I don't think anything should give the DM the right to just ad-hoc the rules at any time. It's incredibly boring, frustrating and unintuitive from the player's side of things.

[The Big Dice]

Are you saying players need to deliberately not use smart ideas, good planning, and creative tactics, and if they do they aren't being a team player?

I'm seriously asking, because that's what it superficially sounds like, yet I don't think that's what you meant.

What I'm saying is, look to your own actions before condemning someone else for theirs. Nobody likes a glory hound, a showboater or a kill stealer. But I see people talking about doing just that, then complaining about the fact that the GM isn't up to scratch. Or worse, the GM dares to take steps that aren't in The Book to try and arrange things so that everyone can have some fun instead of the one person who is trying to do everything that anyone else in the group might try to do.

Roleplaying games are group efforts. It's incumbent on every member of the group to contribute towards the enjoyment of the whole. That means it's as much the player's responsibility to see that the Gm has a good time as it is the GM to make sure the players have fun.

A DM shouldn't need to simplify or play by different rules to present an adventure and provide story or plot hooks for the players. I think it's OK when certain places have a mechanical gimmick that is readily expressed to the players before hand, and I think all campaigns should have a set of house-rules (such as no drown healing) but I don't think anything should give the DM the right to just ad-hoc the rules at any time. It's incredibly boring, frustrating and unintuitive from the player's side of things.

Go check out John Wick's Youtube channel. He can say these things better than I could ever hope to.

The GM is the final arbiter of what happens in his game sessions. The very rulebooks that other people enshrine empower him to ignore them. You could even argue that by playing to the same rules as the players, the GM is breaking the rules. And equally, by cheating he is playing by the rules as given in The Book.

[Tyndmyr]

I notice how it's almost always GMs that are getting the flak for being "bad at games" and other sundry accusations. It's never players that are bad at team sports or that have "Doesn't play well with others" written on their report card. It's always the GM getting accused of all kinds of things, never the player's fault for being overly competitive in a co-operative environment.

Teamwork is essential in team games. Plenty of people here will mention the importance of considering party optimization level when character building. The guy who makes pun-pun is not a team player, but neither is the guy who makes nup-nup the incompetent.

People are certainly willing to blame bad players, but they are also willing to blame the GM. If the GM issue seems to come up more, it's because the GM often is responsible for quite a lot. In most systems, including D&D, it's easier to be a good player than it is to be a good GM. Fair, nah...but such is life.

Is system mastery, rules lawyering, excessively self aggrandizing optimisation and ultra competitive behaviour being good at roleplaying games?

System mastery is. The player experienced with a system will be able to use it better than one who is new to it. That's just part of any complex system.

Rules lawyering. Knowing rules is great. Helping others to learn the rules, also great. Abusing the lack of knowledge of others to get an advantage is not. It's extremely helpful to have a player with very complete knowledge of the rules around. It's generally faster than looking through books. It's not helpful to have long arguments over say, alignment viewpoints.

Excessively self aggrandizing optimization. Well, you've described an obviously negative level of optimization. Some optimization is great. I suggest helping brand new players build characters so they'll accomplish what the player wants them to, and they won't feel dissapointed or left out. ANYTHING that is "excessively self aggrandizing" is bad. Blame that, not the optimization itself.

Here's a thing about being a GM: you cheat. You cheat outrageously. You fudge dice, change your mind about resources, hit point totals, numbers of opponents and amounts of charges in magic items all the time. You cheat in ways that in theory should be getting you thrown out of the game.

No you don't cheat. Or at least, I don't. Sure, I build the game world, and I can add things to it for the players, but that's the GMs job. That's what they do.

Fudging dice? Bah. I consider the DM screen a crutch. Try playing without it. I don't even tell the players they got hit. I ask them "Does a 27 hit?". It works fine. If they one shot an opponent, clearly I significantly misjudged their capabilites, and will ensure they face more difficult challenges in the future. That isn't cheating, that's doing exactly what a DM is supposed to do...design challenges for the players.

That changed the gaming aspect of the GM's role from arbitrator of actions and being the one interpreting the rules to simply being an umpire.

D&D came from a wargame. In a wargame, the only comparable role IS that of umpire. The idea of a DM as an all powerful person who can change things willy nilly is the exception, not the norm.

And you're also overlooking the assigned role of the DM in creating challenges. Yes, there are rules and such for that, but they are extremely flexible ones. There is much latitude in what is acceptable for say, a DM designed dungeon.

Then players started buying the DMG. Or worse, reasing the SRD. The'd be studying up on concepts that don't really belong in the player's area of the game. Things like Wealth by Level, Challenge Ratings and availability of items in a settlement of a given size.

And they assume they're entitled to them. Because it's in the book. And the book became The Book. ALL HAIL THE BOOK!

WBL is a guideline. It says so, and it describes alternate systems for higher and lower, along with their implications. CR explicitly gives you instructions to throw a variety of challenge levels at the players. Not everything SHOULD be equal CR. These are popular assumptions, because they are averages, not hard and fast rules.

Oh, and player entitlement issues were not invented with D&D 3.5.

Now, people act like a GM should be an interface. Know the rules or be made of suck. And it's not like that. GMs make mistakes and they have to have a broader understanding of things than players. A player will always know the rules regarding their character better than the GM does.

But the GM always has the final word on how things work in his game.

If as a GM, you don't know the rules, you do suck. Mistakes happen, sure, and sometimes books need to get pulled out, and things work a bit differently than we thought they did. That's fine, and it's all part of getting good at GMing. But if you don't actually know the rules, and when you find them, instead of making an effort to learn them, you merely ignore them, you ARE a bad GM.

[Morithias]

The DM cannot cheat. That is thanks to that little thing called "rule 0". Screw the rules I make them.

This is what ultimately in my book is what decides if you are a "high quality" DM.

A low quality DM will do one of two things, either always go by the book no matter what, even when it's clearly stupid or obviously wrong (Healing by drowning anyone?), or will 'cheat' because they want the players to lose, they want to basically be the killer DM.

A high quality DM will 'cheat' yes, but the difference is he/she knows where to draw the line. They will not 'cheat' because an encounter is too easy, or too hard. They will 'cheat' because they don't need to waste an hour while the dead guy rolls up another character because he died before the party had access to raise dead.

A high quality DM will also scale his 'cheating' by level. It's just bad to kill someone at level 1, it's annoying and overall didn't even let them get into the story.

Once they're level 15? Have access to all kinds of divination magic? And can afford to be raised in almost any city that has the spell? The gloves come off. TPK is allowed if they deserve it (for example deciding to plane shift to baator and try to take on the whole plane at once).

But again, even though the gloves are off, the high quality DM realizes that this is a game about fun, not about players vs DM, or about railroading whatever plot you had.

The players need to realize this too though, and realize that just because you have an overpowered plot coupon doesn't mean you need to use it. In a recently campaign I talked my DM into letting my Paladin have a copy of the "townsaver" sword from a series of books. It's basically a Deus Ex Machina if I ever use it, but I don't plan to. He gave it to me for free for character development, and I have no reason besides being a jerk to screw him over cause of it. And good players don't do that to friends.

[Umael]

D&D came from a wargame. In a wargame, the only comparable role IS that of umpire.

If you are saying that D&D was strictly the progeny of wargaming, then I must respectfully disagree. All RPGs have their roots in both wargaming AND storytelling. It is like neglecting to mention one parent when discussing the lineage of a particular child.

[Morithias]

If you are saying that D&D was strictly the progeny of wargaming, then I must respectfully disagree. All RPGs have their roots in both wargaming AND storytelling. It is like neglecting to mention one parent when discussing the lineage of a particular child.

If Dnd was meant to be a wargame why the hell does almost no one know about the mass combat rules, and even then we all found the third party "AEG Empire" mass combat rules to be BETTER than the ones in heroes of battle.

[Tyndmyr]

If Dnd was meant to be a wargame why the hell does almost no one know about the mass combat rules, and even then we all found the third party "AEG Empire" mass combat rules to be BETTER than the ones in heroes of battle.

Descendant of /= is. That should answer your question.


Umael, storytelling is an addition to roleplaying, certainly, but D&D did not originate from storytelling. Nor did it originate by mixing the rules of wargaming with those of a storytelling game. So, calling it a descendant of storytelling is not really true.

For comparison, modern computer games very frequently contain a story too, but they are not descended from storytelling in the sense that the earliest computer games had no story at all. It was a later addition.

[Morithias]

Descendant of /= is. That should answer your question.


Umael, storytelling is an addition to roleplaying, certainly, but D&D did not originate from storytelling. Nor did it originate by mixing the rules of wargaming with those of a storytelling game. So, calling it a descendant of storytelling is not really true.

For comparison, modern computer games very frequently contain a story too, but they are not descended from storytelling in the sense that the earliest computer games had no story at all. It was a later addition.

That's like saying that if a family has nothing but elves for 20 generations then one of them marries a human and makes a half-elf, that the half-elf has no human ancestors.

[Swordguy]

@The Big Dice vs. Everybody: It's like I'm watching the last two years of my posting history, but from the outside. May you have better luck spitting into the wind than I did, TBD!


That aside, something extraordinarily insightful was mentioned back around page 2 and got lost in the shuffle. The question always comes up in these threads "why do people insist on disliking/arguing against optimization?" Replies to that question are bandied about by a community of self-described optimizers (that's YOU people, playgrounders!) who have literally no concept on why somebody wouldn't want to optimize a character. We've seen all the theories in this thread already: they're bad at the game, they want to cause drama, they're ignorant and don't know any better, etc.

But, as I mentioned, back about page 2, Genzodus made a whisper in the storm that I think cuts to the heart of the matter. Let's listen in:

The answer is simple: more "optimizers" are actually powergamers than the pro-optimization camp cares to admit.

Now, all of you people jumping out of your chairs and screaming at the screen, you'll note he does NOT say anything resembling "optimizers are powergamers". There is a difference between correlation and causation. A great many optimizers are willing to be team players and work within the group's defined power level for a better game experience for everyone. That's being responsible player, and those folks are fine. However, I would be willing to put a LARGE sum of money on a wager that, out of a pool between self-described "non-optimizers" and "optimizers", a neutral third party would pull a FAR greater number of what that third party would term "powergamers" out of the "optimizer" pool than the "non-optimizer" pool.

Optimizing correlates to powergaming. Depending on the local meta, it can correlate very strongly. And, I think, once somebody has been burnt enough times by a powergamer defending himself by saying "I'm just trying to make the best character I can!", it's not totally unreasonable to be more than a little suspicious when you start hearing self-described optimizers defending their gaming style with words along the lines of "I'm just trying to make the best character I can!".

Does that make more sense to those of you who can't fathom why somebody might object to the practice? I know the tendency on the internet is to hyperbolize everything, so please be aware there is a difference between "basic" optimizing (a Fighter putting their best stat into Strength, or Wizard into Int, not playing a commoner) and the optimizing we have around here (with 30 seconds of looking, here's some example):

"I'm building a mage who I wanted to be as min/maxed as possible, so I managed to get his Spellcasting through the roof..."


"i need help (suggestions) for my DnD character...And its free to use all "abuses", "bugs" and "tricks""

Breaking E6 (thread full of ways to reduce an E6 DM to an unwillingness to run a game in the future follows)

...much of which seems centered around breaking the game or reducing the efforts of a GM who plays without a knowledge of this arms race to tears.

When you wonder why people argue against optimization, they're arguing against stuff like this. And this isn't even Theoretical Optimization - these threads (and we get a new one every few days asking similar questions of how to break a game) are all intended for use in actual play. Thus, Responsible Optimizers, you're getting tarred with the same brush as your powergaming Optimizing brethren in the eyes of everybody else. I can go through this very thread and pick out at least a half-dozen usernames who are arguing that Optimization and Powergaming have nothing to do with one another, and juxtapose their comments with comments in a variety of forum threads asking various ways to "break a game", "make a DM cry", etc. Luckily, I'd rather not be seen as making personal attacks, even when they're completely fact-based.

Is it necessarily fair that those optimizers out there who go out of their way to work with the limitations of the setting, DM's preference, and the rest of the group are getting lumped in with the people who want to optimize to be so good at something a DM can't defeat their character? Nope. But it's human nature, and you're just going to have to deal with it.

Finally, what does optimizing mean to me? I've got several. My definition of "Responsible Optimization" is this:

Mechanically building a character that best fits your design and roleplay goals, and which both accurately reflects your character's backstory and is continually updated to match current in-game experiences. This is subject to the limitations and wishes of DM/GM's preferences, group optimization level, setting, and the desire not to make the game un-enjoyable for any other party...even if the rules allow you to create a more mechanically powerful character.

And at my table, if you don't fit that definition, you're part of the problem.

[HamHam]

If Dnd was meant to be a wargame why the hell does almost no one know about the mass combat rules, and even then we all found the third party "AEG Empire" mass combat rules to be BETTER than the ones in heroes of battle.

Wargame doesn't mean mass combat. Battletech is a wargame and each unit is a single mech.

[snip]

People like playing powerful characters. I'm not sure what is wrong with this.

[Morithias]

Wargame doesn't mean mass combat. Battletech is a wargame and each unit is a single mech.

If you took a character for every soldier on both sides of say WW1 and actually plays each one out during the rounds of battle, I can promise you would quickly get sick of having to do thousands of actions to get pass 6 seconds of game time.

[WarKitty]

To be fair, the boards also have a fair number of us that just like building blatantly optimized characters for the heck of it. I have been known to show my DM a crazy sheet just for the look on his face before pulling out my real character sheet.

[HamHam]

To expand on my previous point, as a person who powergames I feel that some people perhaps don't understand why, and thus it might help if I tried to explain.

I, and I believe people like me, do not want to play Bilbo, and run away from monsters and succeed only because of fudged rolls and DM fiat having an NPC kill the BBEG. I want to play Gandalf, and walk into rooms full of goblins and beat them singlehandedly because I am awesome.

What is required to do this is to have a powerful character. And that means being mechanically powerful. Thus, playing an optimized character.

This has other effects. For example, when presented with an unknown enemy, I will run away until I determine the difference in power level between myself and it, and once I'm sure I'm better than it, I will kill it.

[Weimann]

"Optimizing" for me means finding the most efficient way to represent your character concept.

[Swordguy]

People like playing powerful characters. I'm not sure what is wrong with this.

If you're (general you, not you personally) are unable to recognize the difference between playing a powerful character within the limitations of group/setting/DM's wishes and just playing a powerful character that MUST be allowed because it's "rules legal", then I don't know what to tell you.

No, really. I can't think of anything. Everything I can think of which a person incapable of recognizing that difference ought to be told is outside of board rules.

@Warkitty: Fair enough. But those of us who just read the boards have no idea of that. All the people on the other end of the intertubes get to see is a person advocating an immensely powerful character. Sometimes that character is accompanied by a disclaimer (and for those folks who put those in, THANK YOU), and sometimes it's accompanied by a boast that this PC is going to make the DM's life miserable and the build is proud of that fact. Most of the time it's accompanied by nothing, and so we're left to wonder what exactly you want to take the time building an immensely powerful PC for. And just as those people with a natural love of CharOP have a problem figuring out why somebody wouldn't optimize, so too do people who don't go in for that have a hard time figuring out why somebody would go through the trouble of building a character with seemingly no purpose but to be powerful. Thus, it's not a hard jump from "why would you build a PC like that" to "you're building PCs like that because you want to break the game".

Again, make sense from that perspective? If not, I'll try and rephrase.

[Morithias]

Ok I did some calculations for you "wargamers".

The battle of vimy ridge had approximately 200,000 soldiers in total in it. And it took 3 days to be over.

On the first day the fight went from 5:30 am to 6 pm or 12.5 hours.

so we take hours and convert it to rounds

12.5 * 60 * 10 = 7500

then we multiply it by the number of soldiers in it assuming you have to play out each round, since you're using the core rules for combat.

7500 * 200000 = 1.5 million

It would take you 1.5 million actions to finish the first day, of a 3 day battle.

Think about how long your normal 20 round battles take, and alter the time using that as a base.

Wouldn't surprise me if you wasted a good month doing that one fight.

That is why we have mass combat rules.

[HamHam]

If you're (general you, not you personally) are unable to recognize the difference between playing a powerful character within the limitations of group/setting/DM's wishes and just playing a powerful character that MUST be allowed because it's "rules legal", then I don't know what to tell you.

No, really. I can't think of anything. Everything I can think of which a person incapable of recognizing that difference ought to be told is outside of board rules.

There's no real definite line there. It's at best arbitrary.

[Keld Denar]

I'm an optimizer. I give optimization advise. I never advocate breaking the game though. Check my posting history. My advice may be strong, by some standards, but none of it is game breaking. Synergy is fine. Abuse is not. Just check out this recent thread (still active). Player says "I want to break the rules and cast XP-free shadow miracles at level 11". My response to him?

"The rules don't actually work like that. Doing so is abusive to the rules, and your DM. Don't blame us when things go bad." Shadowcraft Mage is a perfectly fine PrC. Its strong, but not nearly as strong as Iot7V or Incantatrix. Its really just this one trick, which is so retardedly rediculous, that make people think its the most OP thing since Pun-Pun. Without the shadow miracle trick, ScM is mearly a glorified blaster. I could build a Sorcerer who could out-blast a ScM even with greater than 100% quasireality.

Plus, a healthy dose of Wizard's Second Rule seldom goes wrong. People often desire that which is worst for them. Desire must be tempered by reason, or we might find that we regret that desire.

[Greenish]

so please be aware there is a difference between "basic" optimizing (a Fighter putting their best stat into Strength, or Wizard into Int, not playing a commoner) and the optimizing we have around here (with 30 seconds of looking, here's some example):

"I'm building a mage who I wanted to be as min/maxed as possible, so I managed to get his Spellcasting through the roof..."


"i need help (suggestions) for my DnD character...And its free to use all "abuses", "bugs" and "tricks""

Breaking E6 (thread full of ways to reduce an E6 DM to an unwillingness to run a game in the future follows)

...much of which seems centered around breaking the game or reducing the efforts of a GM who plays without a knowledge of this arms race to tears.

When you wonder why people argue against optimization, they're arguing against stuff like this. And this isn't even Theoretical Optimization - these threads

You might want to pick new examples. The first thread there is someone who tried to make a stronger character because he felt his last one wasn't very useful, and is asking if a particular thing (I don't know shadowrun) is useful, with people telling him their opinions. No making DM cry.

Second one is making a character for a campaign with explicitly high power level. Is powergaming bad if you're expected and encouraged to do it?

The third is, for as far as I can tell, theoretical, much like it's predecessor where you'd build an E6 party that can defeat a balor. The only reference to an actual game is a comment of the OP about not trying to break the game. ("Am actually in an E6 game atm. All players involved, despite still being at level 4, have schemes for how to increase their effective power after level 6 via wise feat selection, etc. All sources are allowed. While I wouldn't classify that as breaking the game, I wouldn't presume that all E6 games are core.")


For what I've seen, when someone comes to the forum asking help for breaking an actual game, people tell the poster not to do it.

[Edit]:

Ok I did some calculations for you "wargamers".
<snip>
That is why we have mass combat rules.

That's irrelevant to anything. You're missing the point by miles.

[Swordguy]

There's no real definite line there. It's at best arbitrary.

Yes. Yes it is. And you need respect it and be proactive about finding that line within your own gaming group all the same. Every group will have a different line, and the community as a whole will have a "general" line beyond which they feel something should not be done. It is up to you to exercise your social skills to find that line, and your own sense of restraint and desire to not want to make other people upset with you to abide by that line, or be asked to leave the group.

Here in Cincinnati, we've got several people who are no longer involved in the hobby because they failed to take the above course of action, and they are no longer welcome in groups, stores, and people's homes. Across the entire city no less. They have been exiled from the hobby, and frankly, I don't care about them too much. Gamers have infamously bad social skills, but it's a social game. Part of the social contract is to ensure that everybody has a good time, and my Guide to Responsible Optimization up there goes a LONG way toward ensuring that. Ignore it at your peril.

As a side note, if arbitrariness is a turn-off for you, I respectfully suggest you find a hobby where the rule which is listed first and that overrides ALL the others isn't based totally and completely on arbitrariness.

[Tyndmyr]

Breaking E6 (thread full of ways to reduce an E6 DM to an unwillingness to run a game in the future follows)

...much of which seems centered around breaking the game or reducing the efforts of a GM who plays without a knowledge of this arms race to tears.

I can speak for this one, as it's my thread. Clearly, the 30 seconds spent looking didn't include reading the actual thread, as it's TO. It's not about making a DM unwilling to run a game in the future, it's about finding what crazy tricks you can pull off in E6(or better, because of E6).

Use of TO, such as Pun-Pun, by sneaking it into a practical game would indeed be terrible sportsmanship. However, this is an extreme case, and almost everyone, optimizers or not, are against this sort of thing. Using TO topics as justification for your theory that optimizers consist mainly of powergamers is sketchy at best.


The mass combat thing is an attempt to avoid the primary topic. D&D isn't the ideal mass combat system, this is true. However, that shortcoming is mostly irrelevant to the historical fact that it came from wargaming, and contains a great many things as a result of that.

Apparently, to a lot of people "optimization" means "bad, evil, kill it with fire".

[WarKitty]

I have noticed a fair amount of the playground seems to think optimization=bad. Like in my last thread about optimization levels, I was getting told to "tell the optimizers to tone it down because they're making it less fun for everyone." Despite my saying several times the optimized characters were not munchkins, the problem was the uninvolved players had built characters that weren't any good at their primary role and/or only made use of one suboptimal class ability despite having several available.

I haven't gamed much with munchkins. I have gamed with loonies however, and it's equally annoying.

[HamHam]

[snip]

And the non-optimizers need to adapt as well. As does the DM. Compromise.

For that matter, as long as you aren't being silly geese to each other in game, or out, I doubt it is even actually an issue.

Rule 0 is fine as a last resort, but really you should try and stick to the standard rules as much as possible. And it really does nothing to address the issue most of the time.

[Umael]

Umael, storytelling is an addition to roleplaying, certainly, but D&D did not originate from storytelling. Nor did it originate by mixing the rules of wargaming with those of a storytelling game. So, calling it a descendant of storytelling is not really true.

Look a little more closely at my analogy.

I equated role-playing games to the child of wargaming and storytelling. While the creator of D&D started with wargaming and modified it by adding storytelling, you cannot divorce the storytelling aspect from D&D, nor can you mark the origin of D&D as a wargame, even if that was the first model upon which the creator used.

For comparison, modern computer games very frequently contain a story too, but they are not descended from storytelling in the sense that the earliest computer games had no story at all. It was a later addition.

Bad analogy. The story in a modern computer game is clunky, more akin to a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure than an actual story. However, it is still a story, albeit using a poor medium.

Just as a pop-up book for youngsters or a movie tells a story, so does the modern computer game.

Think of it this way - if you considered yourself a storyteller and wondered what kind of medium you could use to tell a story, using a modern computer game IS a valid choice. My proof of this - professional credit can be given to people who write the stories for your computer games.

[The Big Dice]

@The Big Dice vs. Everybody: It's like I'm watching the last two years of my posting history, but from the outside. May you have better luck spitting into the wind than I did, TBD!

Thanks for the vote of confidence. If I can get one person to open their mind up and see things from a different angle, the spears and arrows I get in return are worth it!

To expand on my previous point, as a person who powergames I feel that some people perhaps don't understand why, and thus it might help if I tried to explain.

I, and I believe people like me, do not want to play Bilbo, and run away from monsters and succeed only because of fudged rolls and DM fiat having an NPC kill the BBEG. I want to play Gandalf, and walk into rooms full of goblins and beat them singlehandedly because I am awesome.

What is required to do this is to have a powerful character. And that means being mechanically powerful. Thus, playing an optimized character.

This has other effects. For example, when presented with an unknown enemy, I will run away until I determine the difference in power level between myself and it, and once I'm sure I'm better than it, I will kill it.

I've played a character so powerful he could literally break plots apart with a couple of spells. This was a GURPS wizard, based on the maxim that "Knowledge is Power." See, simply being able to kill things isn't power. That's just destructive potential. And there's always a bigger damage roll. Or any of a dozen or more different ways to kill what is effectively a very squishy means to hurling energy around.

Power is the ability to control the fate of nations. Without wasting magical effort.

And that's what my wizard did. If he couldn't use Divinations or Seek spells to find out what he needed to know, he'd use Summonings of all kinds or even more esoteric methods. Being able to walk into a room, concentrate for a few moments and dig up all kinds of incriminating information on all kinds of important people, plus the things you need to know to take out insurance policies, makes you far more powerful than any Batman, God or whatever kind of D&D caster you are.

D&D is such a limited game, after all.

"Optimizing" for me means finding the most efficient way to represent your character concept.

The relative positive or negative of that really does depend on your concept...

[Rixx]

When I tell a story, I play to win.

[HamHam]

I've played a character so powerful he could literally break plots apart with a couple of spells. This was a GURPS wizard, based on the maxim that "Knowledge is Power." See, simply being able to kill things isn't power. That's just destructive potential. And there's always a bigger damage roll. Or any of a dozen or more different ways to kill what is effectively a very squishy means to hurling energy around.

Power is the ability to control the fate of nations. Without wasting magical effort.

And that's what my wizard did. If he couldn't use Divinations or Seek spells to find out what he needed to know, he'd use Summonings of all kinds or even more esoteric methods. Being able to walk into a room, concentrate for a few moments and dig up all kinds of incriminating information on all kinds of important people, plus the things you need to know to take out insurance policies, makes you far more powerful than any Batman, God or whatever kind of D&D caster you are.

D&D is such a limited game, after all.

You can do some crazy stuff with divination and Legend Lore and Bardic Knowledge.

Really, the question is why waste your time with any of that. When you can just mind controller all these people to do exactly what you want.